As part of a semi-regular series reviewing venues in Charlton and nearby with free wifi, I worked last Wednesday morning at Moca, the Italian deli/cafe in old Dover Road, which advertises free wifi.

At 9am, the place was quite full, with quite a strong showing of young, but admittedly well-behaved children. I was certainly able to get my head down and do a good hour of work without any concentration problems, and it wasn’t so full that people resented someone on her own sitting at a table for 4. However, there did only seem to be a very few powerpoints and these were not at the proper tables which are better for working.

The free wifi was not a service like BT Openzone or the Cloud, but rather proper wifi with password protection. It was necessary to ask at the till for the wifi and the code was an alphanumeric key, not an easily remembered word. There was no registration required, or conditions to accept. Everything seemed to work quite well. One item with lots of photo needed two goes to download, but it went quickly the second time. I seemed to be the only one using it, so I’m not sure what level of usage it can withstand.

As I started my day here, I had breakfast, a latte and smoked salmon with scrambled egg and both were perfectly acceptable. The woman serving was a little sharp at first, but I think this was to do with the fact that she was on her own with a rush on. A man came out to help and things seemed to settle down. I did appreciate that nobody made any efforts to move me out, or make me buy more, even though I was there, clearly working, for more than an hour.

Moca has a toilet with baby-changing facilities. There is a small terrrace that takes 4 or 5 people. The radio was on when I arrived, but they later put music on, a decent mid noughties playlist with Morcheeba, Moloko and Primal Scream. Well, it worked for me.

SummaryWifi service: 9/10 (due to unknown service levels at times of high demand)Work environment: 7/10 (as long as you can work with music and chatting around you)Food and drink: 7/10

Total: 23/30

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About Antonia

I'm a British citizen, living in Melbourne, Australia, splitting my time between studying for the Executive Master of Arts and freelancing in training, media and communication.
I went to the London School of Economics and in 2008 took part in the Eisenhower Fellowship Multination Programme, the subject of 3 of my blogs.
You can find me on Twitter as @euonymblog or @antoniam